View full sizeMike Francis/The Oregonian Sgt.
1st Class Roland Howard delivers the security briefing before soldiers
take off in a security convoy toward Camp Korean Village.
AL ASAD, IRAQ -- Truck commander Staff Sgt.
James Smith of Riverside, Calif., has one final setting to make as the
Mine Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicle lumbers into its nine-hour
overnight run.

"Are 'The Sounds of the'70s' OK?" he asks his two-man crew over the headset.

Nobody
objects, so Smith spins the wheel on his iPod. A song by the forgotten
band Ace, "How Long Has This Been Going On?" tinkles faintly through
the headphones.

"Hatley, can you turn it up?" Smith asks.

Spec.
Sherman Hatley of Southeast Portland -- 10 years from being born when
the song was popular -- scrambles down from his half-exposed seat in
the gun turret to turn a dial on a box in the rear compartment, where
Gatorade, rucksacks and one civilian passenger come along for the ride.

This is the next-to-last of 10 armored vehicles in a convoy that
stretches for miles from Al Asad Airbase west to Camp Korean Village.
They escort a collection of more than 50 commercial haulers driven by
Jordanians and possibly other third-country nationals. The empty
container trucks, flatbeds, fuel haulers and cattle carriers are bound
for Jordan, where they will be filled with supplies that help sustain
the U.S. military in Iraq.

For
hundreds of the 2,500 members of the Oregon Army National Guard's 41st
Infantry Brigade Combat Team, this is what the 10-month deployment in
Iraq looks like. They climb into armored vehicles and ride the highways
among commercial trucks, usually at night, then pull into a different
military base to sleep until the next leg.

While the odds are
they will all return safely to Oregon when the deployment ends in
spring, they run the greatest risks of all the Oregon soldiers, because
they are on the highways, where the bombmakers work. Already, a
roadside bomb has killed two members of the 41st, Spc. Taylor Marks of
Monmouth and Sgt. Earl Werner of Amboy, Wash. Another bomb took the
lower leg and part of a foot of Spc. Jeremy Pierce of Mehama, a small
town southeast of Salem.

In addition, the convoys risk
conventional attacks by snipers with rifles and other small arms, but
those bullets bounce harmlessly off the 43,000-pound vehicles.

That's
why Smith, Hatley and the third member of the crew, Spec. Joe Clark of
Seaside, often refer to Iraqis as "friendly enemies." The soldiers
navigate through checkpoints manned by members of the Iraqi police and
are accustomed to passing Iraqis who may wave at them, ignore them or
-- sometimes -- fire at them.Generally speaking, U.S. troops are
safer in Iraq by an order of magnitude than they were just a few years
ago, when they routinely conducted foot patrols through rough Iraqi
neighborhoods. Then, they were targeted as occupiers who interfered
with Iraqis' hopes of regaining control of their country. Now, U.S.
troops have receded, mostly, to their military bases, and Iraqi army
and police are the primary face of security. Deadly bombings, such as
last week's coordinated blast that killed 155 in Baghdad, still occur,
but the targets usually are other Iraqis.

View full sizeTask
Force Stetson, the battalion based at Camp Victory near Baghdad
International Airport, encounters one or two roadside bombs a week,
says Lt. Col. B.J. Prendergast of Portland. Most do little damage.
Across the country, says the brigade commander, Col. Dan Hokanson,
Oregon troops may go days without a hostile incident. But the vehicles
remain targets because "we're the only ones out on the road right now,"
Prendergast says.

The state of sort-of war still demands a lot
of the soldiers on convoy. As Sgt. First Class Roland Howard reminded
the soldiers during the final security briefing before they left for
Jordan, "Be courteous, be professional and be prepared to kill." The
rules of engagement for this mission are that all locals are presumed
non-hostile. If they show otherwise, such as by firing at the convoy,
soldiers may to shoot to kill, with no warning shots required.

Simmering
tension makes for a long night, punctuated by two stops on the shoulder
as drivers take a break and the lone Humvee in the convoy refuels.
Hatley spends most of the ride with his head sticking out of the top of
truck, despite the growing chill and spats of rain. This is his first
mission back after his 15 days of leave in Portland, where he got
reacquainted with his 7-month-old daughter, born 10 days before he
deployed.

He and Smith and Clark keep each other awake and
sometimes amused by talking through the headsets, which is the only way
to hear. They groan about the awful, sulfurous smell at the town of
Hit, they watch for signs that Iraqi police are hassling the Jordanian
drivers, tell stories about their children and talk about what it's
like to live in the modern Army.

At 4 a.m., they roll into the
darkness of Camp Korean Village, a dusty way station not far from the
Jordanian border. This trip was uneventful, and all that's left for
them now is to find some blessed sleep.

Confirmed U.S. military wounded (non-hostile, using medical air transport) as of Oct. 3: 38,917

U.S. military deaths for October 2009: 8, the same as July 2009 for the lowest monthly death toll since the war began

Deaths of civilian employees of U.S. government contractors as of Sept. 30: 1,442

Iraqi deaths in October 2009 from war-related violence: at least
364, the fourth-deadliest month this year. Many of the deaths were due
to two vehicle bombs that exploded in Baghdad on Oct. 25. September saw
relatively fewer casualties, with 238 killed, and was the second-least
deadly month for Iraqis since the AP began tracking war-related
violence in May 2005.

Cost
Close to $697 billion, according to the National Priorities Project

Oil production
Prewar: 2.58 million barrels per day
Oct. 28, 2009: 2.50 million barrels per day

Sources: The Associated Press, State Department, Defense Department,
Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, The Brookings
Institution, United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI),
Committee to Protect Journalists, National Priorities Project, The
Brussels Tribunal, and the U.S. Department of Labor